Thursday, April 14, 2011

Diary of a new site build - day 4

Fitting the solar panels and building the fence

Finally the sun came out!

The finished site

Day four was an interesting one, by the time we drove out to Ruatahuna it was raining really hard! And as much as we wanted to turn around and drive back to our warm hotel rooms, we all put our wet-weather gear on and drove (Rhino) up to the site. Lara and i got to work digging the post holes for the fence, while the boys started fixing the solar panels to the framing, and putting the satellite dish up. The cabinet was then put in place, this houses all of the wiring, batteries and a strong-motion instrument (called a Basalt - apparently its from the 'rock series' of equipment!) . And we could then finish the fence, its job to keep out the nosy cattle - sheep are ok as they keep the grass down!

The rain finally eased up and the wind decided to add to the fun! So running after stray equipment and cement bags as well as trying to keep the tarpaulins over our gear was amusing.

Unfortunately due to the bad weather all week it wasn't possible to completely finish the site, so a couple of technicians are heading back out next week to wire up the solar panels and the vault to the cabinet. And install the strong and weak-motion instruments, that will do all of the earthquake recording!

A more detailed story on the site build will be in the next issue of the GeoNet News, including the science involved and how the site was chosen.

About Me

I am a Public Information Specialist at GeoNet. Over the past few years i've been growing the GeoNet name through social media and presentations, and my goal is to increase awareness of what GeoNet does and how people can use the science information available.
I also help manage the info part of our website, answer public and media queries and occasionally get my name in the paper :-)